Reviews

Review by markr all reviews by markr

Xelda is a parody of Zelda on the snes. This is does pretty well.

Artistic: The graphics are very chunky but fairly well drawn, particularly the main character. The animation is minimal but effecitve. There is quite a lot of content in this game, for one weekend. If there was only one person on this team, this would be amazing, however as it was a team effort, I will give it 3/5

Technical: There isn\'t really anything technically amazing about this game. It\'s all there, it\'s fairly polished, but it uses quite a lot of existing libraries for its tilemap etc, and doesn\'t do anything REALLY revolutionary. There is a background which scrolls with parallax which is nice. There aren\'t any nice touches like explosions or particle effects. The sine wave is only present on the title screen, which looks like it was added as an afterthought. It\'s a Pikachu (or its predecessor) which moves around in Lissajoux figures, which is nice but hardly part of the game. 2/5

Genre: This is where this game\'s going to win a lot of points I feel. The parody is exactly right, with the right amount of sillyness, the twist is also rather nice. The troll appears in a very entertaining fashion which enhances the game a lot. Full marks 5/5

Overall: The game is probably better if you like this sort of thing. I did laugh out loud at the parody, but I didn\'t find the game itself very amusing. A few particle fx or at least some explosions or something would have improved it. 3/5

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 3 Technical 2 Genre 5

Review by markr all reviews by markr

An incomplete prototype. No real gameplay, none of the requirements are really fulfilled. Quite a nice demo but that\'s all.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1

Review by markr all reviews by markr

Legoland adventures is a beautiful game. It stands out mostly because of its (I assume) completely original graphics, sounds and (to some extent) music. The idea for photographing the lego man was inspired, and resulted in a really good looking main character. The troll enemy was really devious, and I particularly enjoyed the animation when you get killed (the head and helmet pops off the lego man).

The sine waves are used in at least two different ways (apparently, anyway). The sine wave flag effect is very effective and appears as part of the gameplay. I particularly like the recursive flag (Yes, if you move around, the man on the flag moves too).

I can\'t see exactly how it\'s a parody of Mario, possibly inspired by, but not a parody so I can\'t rate it highly in this category - but it\'s the effort that counts.

I loved the end of game boss (which I wasn\'t expecting). The \"unlockable\" feature is in fact in every level, the gate must be unlocked. As the rules didn\'t specify WHAT or HOW the unlocking should occur I conclude that this is totally acceptable.

Overall: 4/5 - I couldn\'t *quite* bring myself to give it 5, but it really is a very entertaining game, has some original concepts and well done in a weekend.

Artistic: 5/5 - No way I could give this less than 5, with the quality of the graphics and inspired way it\'s done.

Technical: 3/5 - The sine wave was nice but there\'s nothing else to write home about here.

Genre: 1/5 - Well, apparently Eric tried to make it a parody, but I\'m not sure what of, or how.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 5 Technical 3 Genre 1